CUTER THAN BILL HALEY.

Here's three good covers. The first one is by Sophie Barker, of whom I've heard exactly one song, her cover of Peter, Paul and Mary's "Leaving On A Jet Plane". It's a good version, almost Cat Power-ish in it's simplicity and decidedly down tempo bummer air. The song has a special place for me, the original that is, because it was running through my head many years ago when my first long term girlfriend was walking towards the plane, leaving to go to college. The happy ending to that is that we're still friends all these years later.

The second cover is Ann Margaret's version of Bill Haley and the Comets "Thirteen Women", re titled "Thirteen Men". If you're not familiar with the song, Haley's version is about having a dream where the H-bomb goes off, with only one man and thirteen women left alive. Imagine the fun if you were that man, right? So, in Margaret's version, there's only one woman, her, and thirteen men. Though those imagined odds of hooking up with Ann Margaret seem slim, think of it this way: In really life you'd be competing with all men. In Ann Margret's imagined scenario you would only be competing with twelve men for her affections. Yeah, right.

The third is kind of mind blowing, just because of who the singer is and what was done to the chosen song. Betty Lavette's cover of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changing" does not sound like something you'd hear from a soul singer that began her career in the mid-sixties. It almost sounds like Betty Davis backed by the whoever Al Green's band was back in the day, though that might just be because it has the feel of "Take Me To the River". I gotta say, the addition of an in-your-face horn section would really kick ass.

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Listen:
Sophie Barker - Leaving On a Jet Plain mp3 at Internet Archive
Ann Margaret - Thirteen Men mp3 at Internet Archive
Bettye Lavette - The Times They Are A-Changin' mp3 at Internet Archive